Smogon Shoddy Server Statistics - December 2009

I was talking about Mesprit in UU not OU. :P
The Anti-Sweeper set is kinda useless there lol.

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I can attest to that thing's utility in OU, even if I had to use a different EV spread than what the site gave. Gliscor, Hippowdon, and Mamoswine become almost non-issues with Mesprit around, and so does DD Gyarados (barring flinchax). Swampert is practically forced to Roar or flee as it can't do much else, especially when running Calm Mind. As for DDMence, Outrage will fail to OHKO Mesprit and it can easily retaliate with Ice Beam.

Not to mention it takes physical hits like a champ in general with max HP and Defense EV's and can actually attack back.

From experience, U-Turn still does minimal damage anyways, and I can use that to my advantage to either Calm Mind or predict the next switch-in. Admittedly it fares badly against Tyranitar, but that's what the rest of the team is for.

My thoughts exactly. It seems contradictory to have all this suspect testing and not even debate whether PZ and Cress are UU or not and the impact they may potentially have. It certainly looks like we will never have a balanced UU metagame at this rate.

Instead, potential drops from OU should be discussed and specifically chosen to balance suspects before putting half the decent UU pokes into BL, where they are effectively useless.

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Don't like this, if you're saying Pokemon should only be dropped down to UU if it's agreed that they don't seem overly threatening/can help stabilize the metagame and not just make it worse, or something to that effect (the last part of your last sentence is unclear to me). If we did this, Dugtrio, Alakazam, and Rhyperior would all still be sitting in BL right now due to nothing but that kind of theorymon, which was wrong in those cases. Now, sometimes it is right, which I feel that it may possibly be this time (although UU still having stuff like Absol, Houndoom, Mismagius, and Spiritomb makes me uncertain, which is the point of actually testing it). But regardless, it can and has been wrong before, so it in no way should be something we should be relying on or using to make tier decisions--doing something like that will only serve to give us something akin to Old BL again, which would defeat the purpose of all the testing done since then.

Anyway, thanks for the stats, Doug. Now, to look for anything interesting in these...

Thanks so much for the stats, Doug. Good to see Hera's usage rise. I like the fact that the OU metagame is finally settling down, its been pretty chaotic with all the tier switches, etc. And UU is gonna get a big blow with Honchkrow being banned to BL, Venusaur doesn't really have a great counter anymore.

I can attest to that thing's utility in OU, even if I had to use a different EV spread than what the site gave. Gliscor, Hippowdon, and Mamoswine become almost non-issues with Mesprit around, and so does DD Gyarados (barring flinchax). Swampert is practically forced to Roar or flee as it can't do much else, especially when running Calm Mind. As for DDMence, Outrage will fail to OHKO Mesprit and it can easily retaliate with Ice Beam.

Not to mention it takes physical hits like a champ in general with max HP and Defense EV's and can actually attack back.

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Just curious, but, how does Mesprit find time/a way/ strength to attack back if it has no speed or special attack EVs? It's slow and lacking in power, so why wouldn't you run less Defense and HP on Uxie and give it the special attack and speed to be higher than Mesprit? (or something to that effect)

I run Calm Mind, which I'm not sure actually helps or not, considering its primary use is as a countering utility. The boost does help quite a bit late game, though. I don't bother with Speed EV's because I feel it doesn't really outspeed anything worth outspeeding anyways, and Uxie doesn't get Ice Beam.

Don't like this, if you're saying Pokemon should only be dropped down to UU if it's agreed that they don't seem overly threatening/can help stabilize the metagame and not just make it worse, or something to that effect (the last part of your last sentence is unclear to me). If we did this, Dugtrio, Alakazam, and Rhyperior would all still be sitting in BL right now due to nothing but that kind of theorymon, which was wrong in those cases. Now, sometimes it is right, which I feel that it may possibly be this time (although UU still having stuff like Absol, Houndoom, Mismagius, and Spiritomb makes me uncertain, which is the point of actually testing it). But regardless, it can and has been wrong before, so it in no way should be something we should be relying on or using to make tier decisions--doing something like that will only serve to give us something akin to Old BL again, which would defeat the purpose of all the testing done since then.

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Well, then why not have a UU suspect ladder? All i'm saying is that some other method needs to be implemented. Also, many people (including myself) saw no such problem with dugtrio and Rhyperior in UU. One only has to look at others in the tier to determine this. Now, in a tier which contains very few offensive options in comparison to OU how do you expect these 'mediocre' - so to speak - pokemon counter THE bulkiest pokemon in the game. Even if you ko it, it chucks up dual screen support and its gg with stat boosting tanks/sweepers.

There wouldn't be enough players on a UU Suspect ladder. The UU ladder has far fewer battles than the OU ladder and implementing a Suspect ladder for UU Suspect testing likely wouldn't be productive due to lack of participation.

because I used to play back in D/P when Cresselia was a fucking force to be reckoned with even in OU. Those others you mentioned never were too good. Alakazam and rhyperior may seem powerful, but alakazam is frail as fuck, and rhyperior is too slow. Rock polish helps it's speed but even with increased speed it's not very hard to handle. Cresselia on the other hand, used to be very very good before Scizor. CM versions were probably the deadliest to teams but the standard wall ones were also hard to deal with. It has moonlight, which in OU is not much of a recoery move since the sand makes it gain less HP, but in UU people will be forced to use snover or hipopotas to limit it's recovery.

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Rhyperior was also a top contender in early DP, cresselia has paper weaknesses just like alakazam and rhyperior, its offenses are crap, it has exploitable ghost and dark weaknesses, it is vulnerable to taunt and without rest it is ruined by toxic

Could be a sign of centralization. The metagame isn't changing because it can't. I mean, even ordinarily we should see some responsive changes, such as Skarmory numbers falling because Magnezone numbers are rising.

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Or maybe the metagame isn't changing because it isn't changing! This centralization isn't a bad sign, on the contrary, it might mean the metagame is finally settling itself (unlike, say, UU, which always has a crazy new pokémon to shake things up).

My thoughts exactly. It seems contradictory to have all this suspect testing and not even debate whether PZ and Cress are UU or not and the impact they may potentially have. It certainly looks like we will never have a balanced UU metagame at this rate.

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...You know, if people find so, Cresselia and Pory-Z will be voted after the testing period... This is exactly like OU's Suspect testing.

Rhyperior was also a top contender in early DP, cresselia has paper weaknesses just like alakazam and rhyperior, its offenses are crap, it has exploitable ghost and dark weaknesses, it is vulnerable to taunt and without rest it is ruined by toxic

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It's weaknesses have not changed, it's still the same type, and will do what it did before plat, since there is nothing comparable to Scizor (or tyranitar) in UU (maybe Pinser, idk). Taunt also ruined it back then, and it was able to stay alive until the taunters were scouted and eliminated, my guess is that it will have no problem doing so in UU. Toxic fucks over most any wall, there are plenty of walls in OU, UU, NU and even Ubers that don't like toxic, so nothing new there. So I would not think that cresselia's weaknesses are "paper weaknesses"

I'm not saying cresselia will be bad in UU or even that it will not be broken, all I'm saying is that we shouldn't make assumptions with too little knowledge.

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I'd say that throwing a pokemon straight from OU to UU is a pretty big assumption. I know they do this to test, and they will adjust the tiers accordingly but to me, it seems that cresselia is obviously not UU material. Say for example, a pokemon like Scizor was not used much one month. This of course will never happen since Scizor is shuch a useful pokemon but lets just assume. Throwing that shit in UU for a month will only waste time, since clearly such a strong pokemon does not belong in the UU tier. We have all seen what scizor can do (previous to it's supposed drop from OU), even in the OU metagame, and that it should do even better in the UU metagame. To me it seems the same case with cresselia.

It's probably all for the sake of keeping with the current tiering criteria. First UU throw it in UU for testing then vote on it. I guess it seems more organized this way, but like i said, to me it seems like a waste of a test. I'm sure that it takes a lot of time and work to get all those statistics and find the eligible voters and count the votes et cetera et cetera.

I'd say that throwing a pokemon straight from OU to UU is a pretty big assumption. I know they do this to test, and they will adjust the tiers accordingly but to me, it seems that cresselia is obviously not UU material.

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Cresselia has not proven good enough to stay OU. Thus, evidence suggests she may be UU material. To say she's not is a very large assumption. If you can give hard evidence Cresselia has proven herself too good for UU, please state it here.

Say for example, a pokemon like Scizor was not used much one month. This of course will never happen since Scizor is shuch a useful pokemon but lets just assume. Throwing that shit in UU for a month will only waste time, since clearly such a strong pokemon does not belong in the UU tier. We have all seen what scizor can do (previous to it's supposed drop from OU), even in the OU metagame, and that it should do even better in the UU metagame. To me it seems the same case with cresselia.

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Now who's making large assumptions? This scenario, in your own words will never happen. I really hate this argument that keeps being brought up about "what if everyone starts to use Beedrill?" or "What if one day everyone stopped using Salamence" in order to discredit usage based tiers. It will not happen. Ever. So why should we bother taking into account an impossible scenario in our tiering decisions?

Cresselia has not proven good enough to stay OU. Thus, evidence suggests she may be UU material. To say she's not is a very large assumption. If you can give hard evidence Cresselia has proven herself too good for UU, please state it here.

Now who's making large assumptions? This scenario, in your own words will never happen. I really hate this argument that keeps being brought up about "what if everyone starts to use Beedrill?" or "What if one day everyone stopped using Salamence" in order to discredit usage based tiers. It will not happen. Ever. So why should we bother taking into account an impossible scenario in our tiering decisions?

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Pre-Plat it didn't look like cresselia would drop in usage either. Never say never, or something like that. I dont know the exact saying.

I think it's worth adding that UU was made to allow Pokemon that don't get used much to have a metagame of their own. It's not for weaker Pokemon (although it does so happen that it's generally weaker Pokemon that end up there).

There needs to be a cut-off to determine which Pokemon aren't used much.

Infact, if you read throught the old threads in PR, there's actually a few people that wanted less Pokemon (e.g. about 25 Pokemon) in Standard, so they actually wanted to raise the cut-off point, which would be giving us even stronger Pokemon in UU.

I still don't get why everybody panics every single time something goes to UU. If it's too strong, it'ss get banned, and it'll all be fine.

Moderator

This is begging the question. Why argue about a real scenario with an identical imaginary scenario? Your argument also flies in the face of the whole point of the testing process, which was put in place because it's been demonstrated time and time again that we're just not very good at theorymoning bans. We should also keep in mind that we're supposed to look at each metagame as if it were the only one to exist.

fat Smurf. said:

It seems contradictory to have all this suspect testing and not even debate whether PZ and Cress are UU or not and the impact they may potentially have.

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We ARE discussing the dropdowns in the UU forum and on #stark. It's just that with the dropdowns live on the field, we have a much better idea of what we're talking about.

fat Smurf. said:

Well, then why not have a UU suspect ladder?

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There are three things wrong with this. First of all, it diminishes the already small voter pools. Second of all, it puts more "official" attention on the "suspect", which then biases the small voter pool. Finally, attention is diverted from OTHER potential suspects. Thus, you have a small, biased voting pool and a process that will, if anything, take LONGER than the current process.

Cresselia and Porygon-Z in UU feel like one of those theorymon (Theorymon?) dreams come to life: Pokemon that seem extremely powerful by UU standards descended into the UU metagame. I can't stress enough the importance that we not make judgments until we actually use the Pokemon in question; remember that at one time Zangoose was BL. The Suspect process will do what it was designed to do: identify the questionable Pokemon in UU and tier them properly. If these include Cresselia and/or Porygon-Z, then so be it.

That being said, I have my own suspicions that Cresselia won't be among us in UU for terribly long. UU seems ideally suited to emphasize Cresselia's strengths and hide its weaknesses, so I doubt it will perform much worse in practice then it does in theory.

On the other hand, I would be somewhat surprised if Porygon-Z doesn't stick around in UU for at least a while; it is vulnerable to priority with its fairly weak defenses and it may have issues dealing with Registeel and Spiritomb. Either way, "we'll see" on both of the newcomers.

After playing a number of matches once the changes were implemented i can say that i was right in my suspicions. There are no really viable checks to it at present (don't give me some bullshit about pinsir being a counter). The fact that i am forced to run a poke - NPdoom -specifically designed to combat it is a testament to its influence on the current UU landscape. Even that is not sufficient as every team i've seen also carries a chansey for this very reason. Teams that I previously could rip through 4-0 now take me to 1-0 or worse, thanks to Dual Screen and lunar dance. Trust me, theres nothing better than to see a chansey on 8% restore all its hp and pp for softboiled.

You only need to look at how it fares against the most powerful physical and special pokemon to gauge just how broken it is.

Is it broken defensively? yes
Is it broken as support? yes
Is it broken offensively? can be due to its high defenses, Screens and access to charge beam
P.S. Calm mind makes it inpregnable on both offensive and defensive sides

The elusive triple threat suspect. If its not banned next time around, i'll be very, very surprised. Really, if it could fuck off tomorrow that'd be great.